


How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria

by alwaysanoriginal



Category: West Side Story (1961)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Revenge, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 00:49:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17571125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alwaysanoriginal/pseuds/alwaysanoriginal
Summary: Anita puts her hand to her forehead in worry. “Are you sure you know what you are doing, Maria?”Maria smiles back at her, feeling filled with possibilities. “No. But I am having fun.”-----West Side Story: Redux. A rewrite of some key bits, to fix the things about the story that bothered me.More specifically:1. Maria and Tony actually get to know each other, and2. When Tony kills Bernardo, in this world, Maria is not okay with it.





	How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria

**Author's Note:**

> Maria's voice was a little bit difficult to nail down, but I did the best I could to convey her accent and the way she speaks. I rewatched clips from the movie, and she doesn't verbally use contractions very often, for example.
> 
> The lines that come across as most stilted to me in text are the ones taken verbatim from canon, but alas, that can't be helped.
> 
> Hope it works for you anyway!

It begins with a dance.

When Maria enters the circle of dancers–boys on the outside, girls on the inside–she does so by slipping away from Chino quickly, joining the group at the last possible second, knowing that he cannot stop her without causing a scene. She slides in at the opposite side of the circle from Bernardo, stealing glances at him in the hopes that he won’t notice. He does not, even as the circle of people begin to move, because he is too busy glaring at any Jet boy in sight.

She has a flutter of nervous anticipation in her stomach–or maybe it’s excitement? She is not sure what to expect. Where will the circle stop? Who will she be dancing with? She’ll laugh if it’s Bernardo.

She catches Anita’s eye, and Anita stares at her. “What are you doing?” she mouths. Maria grins and shrugs.

Outside of the circle, Chino looks furious.

The whistle blows, the circle stops, and Maria stares up at her partner.

It is as if the world falls away.

Her first thought, oddly, is that he’s very tall. Her second thought is that he is so beautiful it takes her breath away.

He’s staring at her as if she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. The moment stretches and feels longer than it is… until the music begins, and suddenly he’s grabbing her hand and whirling her away, and then: they are dancing.

Maria is intensely grateful for all the times she grew up learning to dance with Anita, because her body knows what to do even while her mind feels frozen. She and this tall, beautiful boy move as one, bodies mirroring each other, coming apart and together, desperately trying to keep eye contact in a sea of motion.

It isn’t long at all before the boy grabs her hand and tugs her off of the main floor, out of the crowd to stand along the wall. They’re both breathing hard, staring at each other again, and she realizes that they are still holding hands.

He moves his head down, just slightly, to make sure she hears him. “You’re not... thinking I’m someone else?”

She shakes her head slightly. “I know you are not.”

“Or that we’ve met before?”

“I know we have not.”

 His answering smile is slow, and lovely, and he moves closer to her ear to speak. “What’s your name?”

“Maria,” she says back, lips close to his ear in return. Their cheeks are almost touching.

“Maria,” he repeats, in wonder. “I’m Tony.”

She feels as if she can’t stop smiling. “It is very nice to meet you, Tony.”

The angle of their heads change; his lips are very, very close. Almost imperceptibly, he sways forward.

“Hey!” 

Bernardo comes out of nowhere, pushing Tony back. Neither of them had realized the dancing had stopped. “Get your hands off, American!”

“Bernardo!” Maria protests.

“Stay away from my sister!” 

“ _Sister?_ ” Tony asks.

“Couldn’t you see he’s one of them?” Bernardo demands Maria.

“No. I saw only him,” she says, still looking at him now.

“There’s only one thing they want from a Puerto Rican girl–”

“That’s a lie!” Tony yells.

Riff is suddenly there. “Later, Tony–”

And now Chino: “Get away–” 

“Stay out of this, Chino–”

Bernardo pulls Maria close, glaring at Tony. “She would listen to your brother before she listens to you!” 

Riff gets in the middle. “Hey, if you two characters want to settle this outside–”

Suddenly, the police man blows his whistle in warning, and then everyone is scattering. Maria tries to protest–”Please, Bernardo, wait”–but it’s too late.

Tony is already gone.

 

\----

 

Maria is frustrated, and she struggles not to let it show.

Bernardo will not listen to reason. He tells her Tony is an American, and one of the Jets; that he is not to be trusted; that she can never see him again; that she must stick to her own kind; that he never should have let her go to the dance. He talks almost all the way home, terrible warning after terrible threat, and Maria lets him. She’s too busy thinking about Tony’s eyes, and besides, she knows from experience that arguing with Bernardo will get her nowhere.

She’s still thinking about Tony when she hears her name called from outside of her window, as if she summoned him with her thoughts alone.

She comes out onto the fire escape and looks down at him, and she tries to convince him to… leave? She’s not sure. She just knows she must think of her parents, and of Bernardo, and of being afraid that they will be caught.

But Tony is bursting delight and optimism, and he comes up the fire escape before she can convince him not to get any closer, before they begin something that can never be.

She cannot say she really minds his persistence.

And yet, she knows she _should_ mind. “Ssh. It is dangerous! If Bernardo knew–”

“I won’t let him know. I’m not one of them, Maria.”

He means it, she can see that. The sincerity shines from every part of him.

“But you are not one of us. And I am not one of you,” she says.

And that is the problem, isn’t it? As if to underline her words, her father interrupts again, calling for her in Spanish from inside the house.

It doesn’t deter Tony. If anything, he makes it clear he only wants to meet her father more. Some part of Maria’s heart sings, hearing Tony already talk about wanting to know her family, maybe even her culture.

But it cannot be. 

“He is like Bernardo,” she says of her father. “Afraid.” The idea strikes her as funny, for some reason, looking at Tony now–so beautiful, so happy to have met her. “Imagine being afraid of you!”

“You see?” he says, as if this proves anything.

“I see you,” she says.

“Maria, see only me.”

“I wish it were that simple.”

“It _can_ be that simple.” The hope in his eyes is obvious. 

“It cannot,” she says. He starts to interrupt–too loud, always too loud–but she puts her hand on his mouth softly. “But I do see you, Tony. I want to see more of you, and to know you.” 

“How?” he asks. 

“We must be careful,” she says, with a pointed glance back at her windows. “We have to be smart. We cannot see each other often, but…” she grins, mischievous, giddy. “Maybe, we can write letters?” 

“Letters?”

“Yes.” She moves to the wall by her windows. “Look here. There is a loose brick.” She tugs it away, carefully, to demonstrate. He peers over her shoulder. “I will leave letters here for you, and you can write me back and leave yours here for me. No one will need to know, but you have to be very, very careful to not get caught. You must be quiet, and you must do it when I am not always here.” 

“I can be careful,” Tony says in a rush. “I won’t make a sound, I’ll be in and out every time, lightning-quick. Anything for you, Maria. I want to do this.”

She smiles up at him, hopelessly drawn to how eager he seems. “Come back tomorrow, and you will have a letter from me to read. But for now, you must go.”

“Until tomorrow, then,” Tony says softly, and it sounds like a promise. He leans forward and gives her a long, lingering kiss on her forehead, and Maria closes her eyes.

“Goodnight,” he says, quiet at last.

“Buenas noches,” she breathes in response.

 

\-----

 

They exchange letters every few days, as much as they can for weeks. True to his word, Tony does not always leave them in the brick at the same time of day, and even when he comes at night, he does not always insist on seeing her. She had reminded him, in her first letter, the rules of this dangerous game they must play. And she had told him that if they are very smart, they can plan ways to sneak moments together in ways that will mean they will not get caught.

She learns a lot about Tony. He tells her about his job at the drugstore and how it’s the proudest he’s ever been to do anything, because of where he came from. She tells him about what it has been like to be new to America, and how she has so many dreams, but does not know where to begin to make them come true.

He tells her how his mother died when he was very young, and his father would do little but drink and yell at him; about how he ended up almost living on the streets or at Riff’s house; about how starting the Jets was his idea. He and Riff had wanted two things: to be listened to, and to make a group where someone could always feel like they belong.

Maria tells him that that sounds like a family, and Tony tells her that’s exactly right.

 _Riff’s my brother_ , he writes, _even if there’s not a bit of blood between us. I’d do anything for him_ . _We have a phrase we use a lot. Womb to tomb, birth to death. I haven’t known him my whole life but he’s the closest thing to family I got, you know?_

 _You would make a good Puerto Rican_ , she writes back. _Nothing is more important to us than family_. _I love my parents, but_ _Bernardo has always been my favorite person. I do not know what I would do if something happened to him._

They sneak a moment together at the dress shop when Maria is closing up. They sneak a moment together at the drugstore one afternoon, and Maria is properly introduced to Doc, who loves her immediately. The first time they kiss is out on her fire escape, one night when her parents are out to dinner; it is also the second time they kiss, and the third, and the fourth, until she can bear to tear herself away and tell Tony to leave.

Even as careful as they are, they do get caught more than once–but, thankfully, by no one that would bring dangerous consequences.

At first, it is Anita. Tony comes to the dress shop a little too early one day, and Anita is still there. Maria tries to make an excuse, but Anita is too smart for that. She stares at Maria with dawning understanding.

“So this is why,” she says.

“Why what?” Maria asks, innocent, as Tony stands there awkwardly. He may be trying to slowly move behind a mannequin, she thinks.

“This is why you have been so happy lately,” Anita says with certainty, and narrows her eyes. “How much have you been hiding, Maria?”

“I…”

Anita puts her hands on her hips, and that is all it takes for Maria to give it up. She is far better at lying to her brother than she is to her very best friend.

“You won’t tell, will you? Please, Anita.”

“We’re being careful! No one will ever know,” Tony says desperately, as if he could not stay silent a moment longer. 

“Yes, very careful. No one will know.” The sarcasm drips from Anita’s words. “And yet, here you are: caught! It could be Bernardo next time instead of me.” 

“We will be more careful, then,” Maria says. And then, with hope: “You will not tell?”

Anita sighs and looks to the heavens for guidance. “Tell what? I have not seen anything.”

Maria laughs and hugs her. “Gracias, Anita! Te quiero.”

“Sí, sí,” Anita says, dismissive, but she’s fighting a smile. “Fifteen minutes.” With a last stern look at Tony, she leaves.

That night, Anita corners Maria in her room and asks her question after question in concerned whispers. _How many times have you seen him? Does anyone else know? Where have you spent time together? What do you mean, letters?_

Maria answers every question truthfully.

At the end of it, Anita puts her hand to her forehead in worry. “Are you sure you know what you are doing, Maria?”

Maria smiles back at her, feeling filled with possibilities. “No. But I am having fun.”

 

\----

 

It isn’t long before Tony is caught, too. 

Maria sees it happen–she’s on her fire escape reading when he’s stopped at the mouth of the alleyway. Her heart is hammering in her chest in fear.

It looks like it’s one of the Jets. Is this it? Is this the end of all of it? She knows Tony cannot lie. He is horrible at it.

The whispered discussion she watches from afar feels like it takes forever, and she cannot hear any of it. She’s frozen, afraid to move in case she makes noise and draws attention to herself, ruining whatever story Tony may be trying to tell. Eventually, Tony shakes hands with the shorter person...

And then the person is coming towards her fire escape, and Tony is leaving.

Maria scrambles to her feet, heedless of the noise this time as she climbs back into her window and shuts it. She stands still, straining her hearing, and it isn’t long before there are footsteps climbing the metal and she hears a quick knock on the glass. 

Slowly, carefully, she pulls a curtain to the side just enough to peer out. The face that greets her is smaller than she was expecting, with shaggy hair and a mischievous smile. A girl?

The girl waves her hand, and in her hand is an envelope. It’s a letter from Tony.

Maria raises the window cautiously and eyes her. “Who are you?”

“Name is Anybodys, princess,” the girl says. “I make it my business to know what happens in the shadows, y’know. I saw your boy come down here one too many times. He’s gonna get himself killed if he ain’t careful, so I struck a deal with him.” 

“A deal?” 

“Yup. See, I wanna be a Jet, but Riff’s a real piece o’ work and won’t let me in the gang on account of him sayin’ I’m a girl.” Anybodys rolls her eyes. “Tony’s ‘bout the only one Riff’ll listen to, so I told him to work on changin’ Riff’s mind. Put in a good word for me, sot-to-speak. So I won’t tell anyone about your secret romance, and I’ll even help you with this dumb letters idea. It’s a fair trade, if you ask me.”

Maria blinks at her, trying to make sense of all of that. But the details don’t matter, she supposes. “Well. If Tony trusts you, then I will trust you too.”

Anybodys snorts. “You don’t really have a choice, sweetheart. But lemme tell you, you can trust me. If I shake on somethin’, I mean it. That’s just business.”

 

\----

 

Maria does not expect to grow to like Anybodys, but she does. Anybodys is… crass half of the time, and the other half of the time she is simply unlike anyone Maria has ever spoken to before. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Anybodys seems to be everywhere all of the time, so she also tells Maria all of the streets gossip the boys usually hide from her. The Jets still won’t let Anybodys into their gang, but she knows everything about what they’re up to–as well as what the Sharks are doing. Maria knows Bernardo would hate that, if he knew.

It is through Anybodys that Maria finds out about a couple of rumbles that are planned, “fists-to-fists,” according to her. Maria is always worried about Bernardo–not Tony, never Tony, because he has sworn he will not get involved in such gang business–but she measures her worry by Anybodys concern. 

The night the second rumble is planned to happen, Anybodys waves a hand. “Eh, they’re all just gettin’ bored more than anything. Jonesin’ for a fight, but not lookin’ to cause real harm yet.”

“Yet?” Maria asks, picking up on the word.

Anybodys suddenly looks shifty. “Well, it’s like they say… third time’s the charm, right?”

Maria leans forward out of the window intently. “What do you know, Anybodys?”

“Nothin’, but... I see things. It’s gettin’ more tense out here, you know what I mean? I think they’re gearin’ up for a bigger rumble once and for all, and Riff wants Tony in on the action.”

 Maria doesn’t bother to hide her worry. “What do you think will happen?”

“Dunno. But the boys all seem to want to use somethin’ more than fists, including your brother. I think they’re tryin’ to plan for some kind of larger fight soon. Might get worse, might not.”

Bernardo comes back that night with a huge scrape on his cheekbone from where he was slammed into the ground. Maria stands in the doorway of the kitchen and watches as he sits in a chair and Anita cleans the cut carefully, standing between his legs. 

Their voices are angry whispers. 

_Why must you always fight?_

_You know why. Do not make me talk to you about this again._

_Someday it is going to get bad, Bernardo. You know it is. You cannot keep on with this._

_I cannot let them win, either, Anita._

_Win what? A playground? A strip of road? It is nonsense._

Maria moves forward and cards her hand through Bernardo’s dirty hair. She can’t help it, suddenly, worried as she is. She needs to touch him, to know that he’s alright.

“I know you, Bernardo,” she says. “What are you planning?”

It is only partially a lie. She does know her brother. But she also knows of the things Anybodys tells her.

Bernardo won’t look at her, and Anita notices that immediately. “Bernardo,” she snaps.

“Nothing yet,” he finally says, avoiding the question.

Anita and Maria exchange worried glances over his head.

 

\-----

 

Maria meets Tony the next night. 

“I know they are planning something, Tony,” she says. “A big rumble, and it could get very bad, very quickly. That’s what Anybodys thinks, and she is never wrong. You need to stop it before someone gets hurt– _really_ hurt.” 

“I know,” Tony says.

“Nothing can happen to my brother, and I know you do not want anything to happen to Riff.”

“You think I don’t hate seein’ them do this? All of them. You know I do, Maria.”

She wants to ask: Then why do you do nothing? But instead, she says, “Then go there, and make it stop.”

“I will. For you, I’ll do it,” he says. “And after it all, you know what we’ll do? We’ll run away together, just you me.”

He grasps her hands and kisses her deeply, desperately.

Part of her wants to keep pushing this issue–the rumble, the worry she feels, all of it. Part of her wants to ask him questions; what does he mean, they will run away? How?

But a larger part of her simply wants to believe him when he says these things will happen. He sounds so certain, so determined. 

So, she does.

 

\-----

 

She should not have believed him. 

Maria is not there when it happens, but later, she hears the story and knows that sending Tony was the worst mistake she could have made.

Seeing him there had only made Bernardo angrier. He had yelled, “You are the one I want to fight most, but you are a coward who will not show up to a single rumble! You say this was your gang but you run away from the problems you have started, and you would run right into my sister’s arms if I let you!” 

Tony had tried to say, “I’m done with the fighting, Bernardo. I want the fighting to stop, and so does Maria.”

And this was the worst part, of course, because Bernardo yelled, “HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT MY SISTER WANTS?”

Tony could give no answer, and that is when Bernardo tried to attack him.

What everyone says, when they talk about it, is “it all happened so fast” after that. Fast is the word they always use. Tony was held back, because Diesel was meant to fight Bernardo. But Bernardo wanted Tony, so Riff distracted Bernardo… Knives were pulled out…

And before anyone could stop it, Bernardo killed Riff.

And so: Tony killed Bernardo.

This is what Chino says.

 _He killed Bernardo_ , with his own two hands and a knife.

Tony killed Bernardo. Her _brother_. Tony _killed him_.

Maria feels like she cannot get enough air. 

She kneels in her bedroom and rocks back and forth in prayer, begging for it not to be true. For it to be her instead. For there to be some kind of a mistake. The wails of her family and friends echo throughout the building, and she hears her mother and father leave, yelling in Spanish in disbelief about needing to see their son. 

When Anita comes into her room, crying and devastated but here to check on Maria as she always is even in her own grief, Maria grips Anita’s arms and apologies. Over and over.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” Anita asks, bewildered. “Maria, none of this is your fault. You did nothing!”

“Yes, I did nothing! And that is why it is my fault!”

“What are you saying? Maria, you cannot carry this guilt–”

Maria shakes her, trying to make her understand. “I tried to stop it, Anita, but it was not enough. I should have gone myself! But I trusted Tony, and he killed him. He killed him!” She chokes on a sob. “I didn’t want to act, and Bernardo’s death is my fault!”

“Maria, you are talking nonsense, this is not true!” 

That’s when Anybodys climbs through the window, white-faced and ready to tell Maria the news. But then, she takes in the scene. “You heard what happened?” 

“I heard,” Maria says, shaking. She wants to cry, but tears will not come, for some reason–and that is when she realizes that her sadness and shock is changing. It is turning into anger. “Have you seen Tony?”

“Yeah,” Anybodys says, shifting from foot to foot. “I helped him get out of there ‘cause the cops were comin’.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“He, uh…” Anybodys won’t meet Maria’s eyes.

“ _Tell me!_ ” she yells. 

Anybodys doesn’t flinch. “He kept talking about you, the whole way. Said he wants to see you and hopes… that you’re goin’ to understand. I took him to Doc’s instead. Didn’t think you’d want him around here.” 

Maria feels like she could not have heard those words correctly. “He thinks I would _understand_? Understand what?” She is shrieking, she knows. She does not care. “HE KILLED MY BROTHER!”

Again, Anybodys doesn’t flinch. She just shrugs.

Maria is breathing hard, and suddenly, she knows she cannot stand for this. She refuses to. This boy… to have killed her brother, to think she would do _nothing_ …

Her voice is hard. “I am done with doing nothing.”

“What do you mean?” Anita asks. Maria had almost forgotten she was there. “What can you possibly do? Maria–” 

“I want... to hurt him.” It feels like she’s biting out the words.

“Maria, what are you talking about? What is this?”

 “He must pay for what he has done, Anita!”

“Maria, please. Your parents will need you right now. _I_ need you right now,” Anita says, begging her. “You cannot come back from such violence. It will darken a part of you, and I will not see that happen. Please! Your brother would not want you to become this.”

Maria does not feel like herself; it is as if a switch has been flipped. In an hour, everything has changed. “It does not matter what Bernardo would want. He is _dead_. I will do this for him.”

“What are you planning?”

Maria doesn’t answer. She turns to Anybodys and demands, “Whose side are you on? Are you my friend, or are you one of them? I need to know now.”

Anybodys grins. “The answer’s in my name, sweetheart. I’m on anybody’s side I want to be. The Jets never wanted me anyway, and after tonight, I don’t want them neither. You’ve got me if you want me.”

Maria stares at her, and abruptly, she nods. “Alright.” Turning to Anita, she says, “I need you to take a message to the Jets for me.”

“What message?” she asks, wary.

“Tell him that Chino found out about me and Tony, and he killed me.”

Anita recoils. “ _Killed_ you? Why would they believe that?”

“Oh, they’ll believe it alright,” Anybodys interjects. “All of ‘em hate all of you. They think you’re savages.”

Anita makes a disgusted noise. “As if they are innocent.”

“Exactly,” Maria says. “And what matters is that Tony will believe it. Anybodys, will you go with Anita? I need you to protect her.”

Anybodys does a sloppy salute. “You got it, princess. I’ll watch her back.”

“What is the point of this, Maria?” Anita asks again, desperate. “Why do you need to do this?” 

Maria just shakes her head. “Anita. Please.” 

Anita gives her long look that says many things. But then her face hardens, determined, and she leaves, wrapped partially in black.

Maria knows why she needs to do this. It is for Bernardo, but it is also for herself. She wants Tony to hurt. She wants him to know the loss of her, however briefly, before she avenges her brother. His affection for her–and she won’t think of it as love, she _won’t_ , because if it was love, he would not have killed Bernardo–is part of what created this situation, and now, it is something she must use against him to end it.

 

\-----

 

After Anita spreads the news that Maria’s been killed, Tony is distraught, more than she ever could have imagined. In another life, perhaps that would have made her feel loved, or happy. But not in this life. The closest she can come is a feeling of satisfaction because he is hurting. 

He is running in the streets, screaming for Chino to kill him too. She can hear him from her fire escape; all of West Side can probably hear him.

She is so angry that she ever fell for this dramatic, idiotic white boy who won her heart with pretty words and empty promises.

While Tony is loudly suffering–as is all of West Side–Chino is showing Maria how to cock his gun before pulling the trigger. She focuses on keeping a good grip, because she’s wearing a pair of Anita’s gloves and doesn’t want to slip.

Chino didn’t want to help her, but right now, Maria is not in the mood to be argued with or to have other people make choices for her. And Chino understands, in a way; she had said, “It is for Bernardo. He killed _my_ _brother_ ,” and that was all it took. He couldn’t hide the understanding in his face as he wordlessly handed her the gun.

As he adjusts her gloved fingers on the heavy piece of metal, he says quietly, “El ero mi hermano tambien.”

Maria wants to laugh. She wants to scream. Boys and their version of “brothers”–it all leads to violence. But is she any better than them? Maybe she isn’t.

She thinks about all of the times her brother threatened to hurt someone as part of protecting her. Maybe love, like hate, is also about violence.

Better to not feel anything at all, she thinks. But that is for later.

 

\----

 

She wears her brother’s jacket, and finds Tony in the playground. It isn’t very difficult, because he hasn’t stopped yelling. She knows this means she has very little time. 

“Tony!” she yells, running towards him.

He turns with a gasp, tears on his face, and he looks at her like she’s the sun. It makes her want to slap him.

“Maria! You’re alive!”

She runs into his arms, and allows him to gather her close. “Of course I’m alive! Of course! I had to come back to you!”

“I was so worried! I thought–They said you were dead, and I couldn’t go on! Maria, listen to me, please, I’m so–”

“Shh, Tony, it’s alright,” she makes herself say. She doesn’t want his useless apologies.

He caresses her face, and she can’t stand it a moment longer. She holds him to her tightly, pretends she’s overwhelmed and can’t stand up anymore, and guides him so they’re kneeling on the ground together.

“Oh, Maria,” Tony says. “I love you so much.”

Enough.

She pulls the gun out from her brother’s jacket, and cocks it to Tony’s temple. 

He freezes.

Confusion in his voice. “Maria? Maria, what is this?” 

“You are _wrong_ ,” she hisses. Now that she is no longer pretending, the rage feels close. “I am _not_ alive! You killed part of me when you killed my brother! You have done this to me!”

A hint of fear, now: “Maria?”

“You made me such beautiful promises, but they were empty. Empty promises, pretty lies, that is all they were!” She struggles to keep her voice down. “You are just like the rest of them! Filled with violence, and hate, and you do not think to the future for more than a moment! I should have gone to stop the fight myself, but I trusted you too many times, and now look where it has gotten me. A dead brother, and a broken heart, and hate just like the rest of you.” 

His confusion is gone, and the fear is all that’s left. Her name is now a prayer: “Maria–”

Silent tears are falling down her cheeks. She ignores them. He shifts slightly, a small aborted movement, and she digs the gun harder into his temple. “No! I am _done_ with your words. I am _done_ with this stupid, pointless fight! This is the end of it. You could not end it, none of you could, and I am ending it myself. _This is for my brother_.” 

With her right hand, she pulls out a small piece of paper and presses it into his left palm. Reflexively, he takes it, as she knew he would. He is too surprised to do anything else.

She smoothly gets to her feet, keeping the gun trained on his temple. His eyes move to stare up at her: beautiful, blue, shocked, terrified. Seeing her as if for the first time, rather than the last.

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

As she thought: useless.

She closes her eyes, and pulls the trigger. The sound echoes in the silence.

In a detached sort of way, she notices that his body looks unnatural and strange, the way it fell. As the pool of blood spreads, she moves forward quickly. Careful to not look at his head, she reaches out to his arm. Her gloved hands are shaking slightly, but she concentrates and steadies them just enough to close his right hand around the gun.

She checks that his left hand is still holding the paper, and it is. The paper is small, with jagged edges, clearly ripped from a larger piece of paper. If Tony had looked at it, it would’ve been familiar to him. It’s familiar to her too.

The words on it are in his handwriting. She had read it at the bottom of a letter, two days ago:

_I love you, Maria._

A lie.

Sirens are already wailing in the distance. Anybodys waves her around a corner and into a tunnel, and Maria slips into the night. She lets the few tears left on her cheeks dry in the nighttime air.

 

\-------

 

The moment Maria climbs back through her window and sees Anita sitting on her bed, she breaks down. 

Anita’s face goes from worry to relief to worry again as she rushes forward to catch Maria, who’s trembling now. Quietly, almost apologetically, Anybodys slips back out the window again. She takes the gloves with her.

It’s not difficult for Maria to cry herself into a state fit for a police officer to see. When he comes, as she knew he would, he finds her with tired, swollen eyes, holding on tightly as Anita whispers “ _Se acabó_ ” to her over and over.

Lieutenant Schrank asks, “Are you Maria?”

“Yes,” she says dully. This is the last part she has to play.

He looks uncomfortable in the face of her grief. “We found Tony. He… well, he took his own life. Looks like the guilt was too much for him, havin’ killed your brother and all. I’m sure you heard all about that. I’m sorry.” 

He holds out his hand, and Maria knows what’s in it without looking. She turns her head away and into Anita’s shoulder with a sob, and it’s only partially faked. 

Anita tightens her grip. “Go!” she says fiercely. “Leave us alone! We have had enough of death!”

“Alright, alright,” Schrank snaps. “I’m just doin’ my job, you understand? Christ.”

He leaves, mumbling to himself about “immigrant scum” and “deadbeat good-for-nothin’ kids,” slamming the door behind him. After a moment, Anita gently pulls away from Maria to get up and lock it.

Maria sits there and feels… hollow. Empty. She feels nothing. Now that it's done, now that it is all truly over, she is not sure she can move on. She is not sure she will feel like herself ever again. She has no brother. The old Maria is dead. Who is left? 

Something of her emptiness must be showing on her face, because when Anita comes back in and catches sight of her, she says, “Oh Maria.” 

Anita sits next to Maria again and holds her hand. Maria stares down at their hands unseeingly.

“Anita,” Maria says quietly. “What do we do?”

“We have had enough of death,” Anita says again, but this time it is said differently. Softer. “We grieve, and then we must learn to continue to live.”

“But I think I have died too,” Maria whispers, like a confession.

Anita doesn’t say anything to that, and after a moment, Maria gets up. She moves to her desk, where there are scattered pieces of paper–the letters Tony gave her. 

She gathers them all up, and goes out to the fire escape, staring into the night. Carefully, she sits down on the edge, with her legs dangling over.

And she takes the letters into her hands, one by one, and begins to rip each of them into very small pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)
> 
> My idea with writing this, aside from "fixing all the things that pissed me off," was to do a different angle to the tragedy at the end. We all know it's based off of Romeo & Juliet, in which both main characters die. In my version, my intent is that Tony dies, and because it's at Maria's hand, a part of her kind of dies with him.
> 
> You could argue a part of Maria "dies" in the original version too, I suppose. But I wanted to make it more pronounced. And mostly, I really hate that in canon she didn't seem to care for more than 30 seconds that her brother was killed, and she supposedly "loved" a boy she'd only known for 3 days.
> 
> (YES YES I know it's all a dramatization but dammit, stuff like this bothers me to no end)
> 
> Also, the letters idea is partially an homage to the real letters of Verona, Italy that are written to Juliet by thousands of people annually. 
> 
> If you want the soundtrack to this story, it's this song:  
> "Familia" by Nicki Minaj & Anuel AA.  
> https://open.spotify.com/track/4Uy3kNxW2kB8AEoXljEcth?si=_Rrtvzf_QNGopdK3T4mJXA


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